I STILL DREAM OF ORGONON

Catching Up on Books and ARCs, Part 3

Still catching up on books and ARCs that came in when I was on tour (and some that have come in since). I’ll note for the record, however, that I actually bought Scatter, Adapt and Remember because Annalee Newitz is a pal and also it looks really good even if it uses the Oxford comma in the title WTF.

The Heroes is a great primer for the Abercrombie books. Also a great way to pass the time waiting for the next Game of Thrones book. Similar dirty, gritty fantasy. But otherwise totally different and awesome.

Since there were no limits on how many titles I could recommend, definitely The Shining Girls and Scatter, Adapt and Remember are on the list. The Ellison books aren’t fantasy or SF. They’re his 1950s and early 1960s short stories of crime and juvenile delinquency. I had Pyramid paperback editions of them from years and years ago, and remember being chilled by them.

BTW, did you hear the story of the unsold Ellison story about a murderer who got rid of his victim by cutting the corpse up into little pieces and then flushing the remains down the john? His crime gets foiled when his attempt to dispose of the corpse clogs the toilet. Ellison’s title for the story was “Only Death Could Stop It.”

I agree with kennelliver: recently read The Heroes and found it to be a great and fascinating read. Going to explore more Abercrombie stuff based on that and found it a good introduction to his work, a nice jumping in book that is free-standing in a larger world.

I’ve always had a high opinion of Scalzi; now that I know he removes Oxford Commas (aka Serial Commas), he is a Serial Comma Killer – only one word removed from a Serial Killer. This is deeply disturbing.

All attempts at snark aside, of course the Oxford Comma is superior – it removes the potential for confusion, and at a small cost in pixels.

I liked Wen Spencer’s “Eight Million Gods”. It jumped around a little too much for me to say I ~really~ liked it, but there was a lot of Shinto information that I’d never seen before. Lot of research went into that book. Prefer her Elfhome series, but that’s just a personal quirk.

All right-thinking people use the Oxford comma. “I’d like to thank my parents, the queen of England and the Pope” being the G-rated example. This being the not-so-G-rated example. Definitely NSFW, FYI.

It’s fun to speculate about the future.
I think it’s the guy who wrote ‘Icebones’ who wrote a somewhat awesome
and somewhat silly future of everything.
Yes, Baxter Evolution.

Because of the title I’ve added “Scatter, Adapt, and Remember” to my ‘decide
later/wish’ list.
Best future history book ever might be swanwick michael bones of the earth
because none of it happened: Just as we don’t exist: We are an unusually large
quantum fluctuation of nothing becoming the universe.
Which, of course, means that when Dawny kicks me in the shins for blocking
her goal it doesn’t hurt.

PWStrain: You might be looking in the wrong place. At http://harlanellison.com/heboard/index.htm he indicated recently (4 June) that having just been examined top to bottom, he’s doing well for having just turned 79 – possibly to his surprise: “[…] apparently I am doing just fine, and have no reason to complain.”

Harlan Ellison (now how do you make the registered trademark symbol on an iPad?). Uncle Harlan is a litigious man, so watch it! Do not violate the trademark! Maybe ALL CAPS -as in HARLAN ELLISON? Or better yet -He Who Must Not Be Named! Wait, that’s taken.

Ok, I’ve never heard of the term “Oxford comma” so I punch it into Google, check the Wikipedia
page which comes up, and go back to reading – in about fifteen seconds (I’m a slow typist).
Then it struck me just how I would have found that out twenty years ago, and how the world
really has changed.

I just finished Scatter, adapt, and remember. very good. Interesting discussions of mass extinctions and the theory that we are in the 6th one now. (not the idea of ‘oh, look, 90% of the world just fell over and died’ but rather a discussion of the timeline for a mass extinction over a long period of time.
read it,

I am looking forward to Hellfire, it is book 3 of a really good series. The author was challenged about her ability to write a Military SF, as she normally writes more Romantic novels. Of course, telling someone they can’t do something, in this case showed that they could!